Dr. Plaisted responds to comments and criticisms of this article here.

adiometric dating methods estimate the age of rocks using
calculations based on the decay rates of radioactive elements such as
uranium, strontium, and potassium. On the surface, radiometric dating
methods appear to give powerful support to the statement that life has
existed on the earth for hundreds of millions, even billions, of
years. We are told that these methods are accurate to a few percent,
and that there are many different methods. We are told that of all
the radiometric dates that are measured, only a few percent are
anomalous. This gives us the impression that all but a small
percentage of the dates computed by radiometric methods agree with the
assumed ages of the rocks in which they are found, and that all of
these various methods almost always give ages that agree with each
other to within a few percentage points. Since there doesn’t seem to
be any systematic error that could cause so many methods to agree with
each other so often, it seems that there is no other rational
conclusion than to accept these dates as accurate.

However, this causes a problem for those who believe based on the
Bible that life has only existed on the earth for a few thousand
years, since fossils are found in rocks that are dated to be over 500
million years old by radiometric methods, and some fossils are found
in rocks that are dated to be billions of years old. If these dates
are correct, this calls the Biblical account of a recent creation of
life into question.

After study and discussion of this question, I now believe that the
claimed accuracy of radiometric dating methods is a result of a great
misunderstanding of the data, and that the various methods hardly ever
agree with each other, and often do not agree with the assumed ages of
the rocks in which they are found. I believe that there is a great
need for this information to be made known, so I am making this
article available in the hopes that it will enlighten others who are
considering these questions. Even the creationist accounts that I
have read do not adequately treat these issues.

At the start, let me clarify that my main concern is not the age of
the earth, the moon, or the solar system, but rather the age of life,
that is, how long has life existed on earth. Many dating methods seem
to give about the same ages on meteorites. Thus radiometric dating
methods appear to give evidence that the earth and meteorites are old,
if one accepts the fact that decay rates have been constant. However,
there may be other explanations for this apparent age. Perhaps the
earth was made from older pre-existing matter, or perhaps decay rates
were briefly faster for some reason. When one considers the power of
God, one sees that any such conclusions are to some extent tentative.
For some evidence for a young universe, see
http://users.aol.com/profhilljw/davidspg/snr.htm
and
http://users.aol.com/profhilljw/davidspg/hst.htm .
For some evidence for a young sun, see
http://www.icr.org/pubs/imp/imp-276.htm.
I believe that life was recently created. I also believe that the
evidence indicates that the earth has recently undergone a violent
catastrophe.

Geologic time is divided up into periods, beginning with the
Precambrian, followed by the Cambrian and a number of others, leading
up to the present. Some fossils are found in Precambrian rocks, but
most of them are found in Cambrian and later periods. We can assume
that the Precambrian rocks already existed when life began, and so the
ages of the Precambrian rocks are not necessarily related to the
question of how long life has existed on earth. The Cambrian period
is conventionally assumed to have begun about 550 million years ago.
Since Cambrian and later rocks are largely sedimentary and igneous
(volcanic) rocks are found in Cambrian and later strata, if these
rocks are really 550 million years old, then life must also be at
least 550 million years old. Therefore, my main concern is with
rocks of the Cambrian periods and later.

Radioactive elements decay gradually into other elements. The
original element is called the parent, and the result of the decay
process is called the daughter element. Assuming we start out with
pure parent, as time passes, more and more daughter will be produced.
By measuring the ratio of daughter to parent, we can measure how old
the sample is. A ratio of zero means an age of zero. A higher ratio
means an older age. A ratio of infinity (that is, all daughter and no
parent) means an age of essentially infinity.

Each radioactive element has a half-life, which tells how long it
takes for half of the element to decay. For potassium 40, the
half-life is about 1.3 billion years. In general, in one half-life,
half of the parent will have decayed. In two half-lives, half of the
remainder will decay, meaning 3/4 in all will have decayed. In
general, in n half-lives, only 1/(2^n) of the original parent material
will be left.

Potassium 40 (K40) decays to argon 40, which is an inert gas, and to
calcium. Potassium is present in most geological materials, making
potassium-argon dating highly useful if it really works. Potassium is
about 1/40 of the earth’s crust, and about 1/10,000 of the potassium
is potassium 40. Uranium decays to lead by a complex series of steps.
Rubidium decays to strontium. Thus we obtain K-Ar dating, U-Pb
dating, and Rb-Sr dating, three of the most common methods.

When it is stated that these methods are accurate to one or two
percent, it does not mean that the computed age is within one or two
percent of the correct age. It just means that there is enough
accuracy in the measurements to compute t to one or two percentage
points of accuracy, where t is the time required to obtain the
observed ratio of daughter to parent, assuming no initial daughter
product was present at the beginning, and no daughter or parent
entered or left the system. For isochrons, which we will discuss
later, the conditions are different. If these conditions are not
satisfied, the error can be arbitrarily large.

In order to use these methods, we have to start out with a system in
which no daughter element is present, or else know how much daugher
element was present initially so that it can be subtracted out. We
also need to know that no parent or daughter has entered or left the
system in the meantime. Radiometric dating is commonly used on
igneous rocks (lava), and on some sedimentary minerals. But fossils
can generally not be dated directly. When lava is hot, argon escapes,
so it is generally assumed that no argon is present when lava cools.
Thus we can date lava by K-Ar dating to determine its age. As for the
other methods, some minerals when they form exclude daughter products.
Zircons exclude lead, for example, so U-Pb dating can be applied to
zircon to determine the time since lava cooled. Micas exclude
strontium, so Rb-Sr dating can be used on micas to determine the
length of time since the mica formed.

I found the following statement in an on-line (non creationist)
reference, as follows:

“This is possible in potassium-argon (K-Ar) dating, for example,
because most minerals do not take argon into their structures
initially. In rubidium-strontium dating, micas exclude strontium when
they form, but accept much rubidium. In uranium-lead (U-Pb) dating of
zircon, the zircon is found to exclude initial lead almost completely.”

[from the Britannica Online, article “Geochronology: The Interpretation
and Dating of the Geologic Record.”]
So because of this, one can do Rb-Sr dating on micas because they
exclude strontium when the micas form. Thus one would know that any
strontium that is present had to come from the parent rubidium, so by
computing the ratio and knowing the half life, one can compute the age.

In general, when lava cools, various minerals crystallize out at
different temperatures, and these minerals preferentially include and
exclude various elements in their crystal structures. So one obtains
a series of minerals crystallizing out of the lava. Thus the
composition of the lava continues to change, and later minerals can
form having significantly different compositions than earlier ones.
Lava that cools on the surface of the earth is called extrusive. This
type of lava cools quickly, leaving little time for crystals to form,
and forms basalt. Lava that cools underground cools much more slowly,
and can form large crystals. This type of lava typically forms
granite or quartz.

I admit this is a very beautiful theory. This would seem to imply
that the problem of radiometric dating has been solved, and that there
are no anomalies. So if we take a lava flow and date several minerals
for which one knows the daughter element is excluded, we should always
get the exact same date, and it should agree with the accepted age of
the geological period. Is this true? I doubt it very much. If the
radiometric dating problem has been solved in this manner, then why do
we need isochrons, which are claimed to be more accurate?

The same question could be asked in general of minerals that are
thought to yield good dates. Mica is thought to exclude Sr, so it
should yield good Rb-Sr dates. But are dates from mica always
accepted, and do they always agree with the age of their geologic
period? I suspect not.

Indeed, there are a number of conditions on the reliability of
radiometric dating. For example, for K-Ar dating, we have the
following requirements:

For this system to work as a clock, the following 4 criteria
must be fulfilled:

1. The decay constant and the abundance of K40 must be known
accurately.

2. There must have been no incorporation of Ar40 into the
mineral at the time of crystallization or a leak of Ar40 from the
mineral following crystallization.

3. The system must have remained closed for both K40 and Ar40
since the time of crystallization.

4. The relationship between the data obtained and a specific
event must be known.

“But what about the radiometric dating methods? The earth is supposed
to be nearly 5 billion years old, and some of these methods seem to
verify ancient dates for many of earth’s igneous rocks. The answer is
that these methods, are far from infallible and are based on three
arbitrary assumptions (a constant rate of decay, an isolated system in
which no parent or daughter element can be added or lost, and a known
amount of the daughter element present initially).”

“All of the parent and daughter atoms can move through the
rocks. Heating and deformation of rocks can cause these atoms to
migrate, and water percolating through the rocks can transport these
substances and redeposit them. These processes correspond to changing
the setting of the clock hands. Not infrequently such resetting of the
radiometric clocks is assumed in order to explain disagreements
between different measurements of rock ages. The assumed resettings
are referred to as `metamorphic events’ or `second’ or `third
events.’ ”

And again,

“It is also possible that exposure to neutrino, neutron, or cosmic
radiation could have greatly changed isotopic ratios or the rates at
some time in the past.”

It is known that neutrinos interact with atomic nucleii, so a larger
density of neutrinos could have sped up radioactive decay and made
matter look old in a hurry. Some more quotes from the same source:

a. In the lead-uranium systems both uranium and lead can migrate
easily in some rocks, and lead volatilizes and escapes as a vapor at
relatively low temperatures. It has been suggested that free neutrons
could transform Pb-206 first to Pb-207 and then to Pb-208, thus
tending to reset the clocks and throw thorium-lead and uranium-lead
clocks completely off, even to the point of wiping out geological
time. Furthermore, there is still disagreement of 15 percent between
the two preferred values for the U-238 decay constant.

b. In the potassium/argon system argon is a gas which can escape from
or migrate through the rocks. Potassium volatilizes easily, is easily
leached by water, and can migrate through the rocks under certain
conditions. Furthermore, the value of the decay constant is still
disputed, although the scientific community seems to be approaching
agreement. Historically, the decay constants used for the various
radiometric dating systems have been adjusted to obtain agreement
between the results obtained. In the potassium/argon system another
adjustable “constant” called the branching ratio is also not
accurately known and is adjusted to give acceptable results.

Argon-40, the daughter substance, makes up about one percent of the
atmosphere, which is therefore a possible source of
contamination. This is corrected for by comparing the ratio
argon-40/argon-36 in the rock with that in the atmosphere. However,
since it is possible for argon-36 to be formed in the rocks by cosmic
radiation, the correction may also be in error. Argon from the
environment may be trapped in magma by pressure and rapid cooling to
give very high erroneous age results. In view of these and other
problems it is hardly surprising that the potassium/argon method can
yield highly variable results, even among different minerals in the
same rock.

c. In the strontium/rubidium system the strontium-87 daughter atoms
are very plentiful in the earth’s crust. Rubidium-87 parent atoms can
be leached out of the rock by water or volatilized by heat.

All of these special problems as well as others can produce
contradictory and erroneous results for the various radiometric dating
systems.

So we have a number of mechanisms that can introduce errors in
radiometric dates. Heating can cause argon to leave a rock and make
it look younger. In general, if lava was heated after the initial
flow, it can yield an age that is too young. If the minerals in the
lava did not melt with the lava, one can obtain an age that is too
old. Leaching can also occur; this involves water circulating in rock
that can cause parent and daughter elements to enter or leave the rock
and change the radiometric age.

Thus it is easy to rationalize any date that is obtained. If a date is
too old, one can say that the mineral did not melt with the lava.
(Maybe it got included from surrounding rock as the lava flowed
upward.) If the date is too young, one can say that there was a later
heating event. One can also hypothesize that leaching occurred.

But then it is claimed that we can detect leaching and heating. But
how can we know that this claim is true, without knowing the history
of rocks and knowing whether they have in fact experienced later
heating or leaching?

The problems are compounded because many of the parent and daughter
substances are mobile, to some extent. I believe that all parent
substances are water soluble, and many of the daughter products as
well. A few sources have said that Sr is mobile in rock to some
extent. This could cause trouble for Rb-Sr dating. In fact, some
sources say that Sr and Ar have similar mobilities in rock, and Ar is
very mobile.

Especially the gaseous radiometric decay byproducts such as argon,
radon, and helium are mobile in rock. So if a rock has tiny cracks
permitting gas to enter or escape or permitting the flow of water, the
radiometric ages could be changed substantially even without the rock
ever melting or mixing.

For example, suppose that 1/300,000 of the argon in a rock escapes in
one day. Then in 1000 years the rock will have less than 1/(2.7) of
its original argon. In 5000 years the rock will have less than
1/(2.7^5) of its original argon. Now, there is probably not much
argon in a rock to start with. So the loss of a tiny amount of argon
can have significant effects over long time periods. A loss of
argon would make the rock look younger.

In a similar way, argon could enter the rock from the air or from
surrounding rocks and make it look older. And this can also happen by
water flowing through the rock through tiny cracks, dissolving parent
and daughter elements. It would be difficult to measure the tiny
changes in concentration that would suffice to make large changes in
the radiometric ages over long time periods.

I also question the assertion that argon, for example, is excluded
from certain minerals when they crystallize and never enters later on.
Geologists often say that ages that are too old are due to excess
argon. So it must be possible for that excess argon to get in, even
though the crystal is supposed to exclude it. Here is one such
reference, although this is to a mineral that does not exclude argon:

“As in all dating systems, the ages calculated can be affected by the
presence of inherited daughter products. In a few cases, argon ages
older than that of the Earth which violate local relative age patterns
have even been determined for the mineral biotite. Such situations
occur mainly where old rocks have been locally heated, which released
argon-40 into pore spaces at the same time that new minerals
grew. Under favourable circumstances the isochron method may be
helpful, but tests by other techniques may be required. For example,
the rubidium-strontium method would give a valid isotopic age of the
biotite sample with inherited argon.”

Another problem is that the crystal structure typically has
imperfections and impurities. For example, different kinds of quartz
have different colors due to various impurities that are included but
not part of the repetitive unit of the quartz crystal. So even if the
crystal excludes the daughter element, it could be present in
impurities. Thus crystals, as they form, may have tiny imperfections
that accept parent and daughter products in the same ratios as they
occur in the lava, so one can inherit ages from the lava into minerals
in this way. It is also possible that parent and daughter elements
could be present in boundaries between regular crystal domains. I
don’t know how we can be sure that a crystal will exclude argon or
other daughter substances except by growing it in the laboratory under
many conditions.

There can also be argon or other daughter products added from the air
or from other rocks. One could say that we can detect whether the
daughter is embedded in the crystal structure or not. But this would
require an atom by atom analysis, which I do not believe is practical.

Since K-Ar (potassium-argon) dating is one of the most prevalent
techniques, some special commentary about it is in order. Potassium
is about 2.5 percent of the earth’s crust. About 1/10,000 of
potassium is K40, which decays into Ar40 with a half-life of 1.3
billion years. Actually, only about 1/8 of the potassium 40 decays to
argon, and the rest decays to calcium. Thus after n half-lives,
(1/2)^n of the original potassium 40 will remain. Of the 1 - (1/2)^n
which has decayed, about 7/8 will have decayed into calcium, and the
remaining 1/8 will have decayed into argon 40. Argon is about 3.6 x
10 ^ -6 of the earth’s crust. We can assume, then, that the magma is
probably about 1/40 potassium and about 1/400,000 K40. After 570
million years, about 26 percent of this potassium will have decayed,
so that there will be about 1/3 as much decay product as K40. About
1/8 of the decay product will be Argon 40, so there will be about 1/24
as much argon 40 as K40. Thus we should expect about 1/9,600,000 of a
rock having an average concentration of potassium, to be argon, if the
rock is really 570 million years old. This is about one ten millionth
of the mass of the rock, a very tiny percentage. And yet, with a
large amount of argon in the air and also filtering up from rocks
below, and with excess argon in lava, with argon and potassium water
soluble, and argon mobile in rock, we are still expecting this wisp of
argon to tell us how old the rock is! The percentage of Ar40 is even
less for younger rocks. For example, it would be about one in 100
million for rocks in the vicinity of 57 million years old.

To get one part in 10 million of argon in a rock in a thousand years,
we would only need to get one part in 10 billion entering the rock
each year. This would be less than one part in a trillion entering
the rock each day, on the average. This would suffice to give a rock
having an average concentration of potassium, a computed
potassium-argon age of over 500 million years!

We can also consider the average abundance of argon in the crust. If
we assume that a rock has 1/400,000 K40, that is, 2.5 x 10 ^ -6 K40,
and 3.6 x 10 ^ -6 Ar40, then eight times this much K40 must have
decayed, thus about 28.8 x 10 ^ -6 parts of K40 have decayed, so there
is less than 1/10 of the original K40 left. This implies a
radiometric age of over 4 billion years. So a rock can get a very old
radiometric age just by having average amounts of potassium and argon.
It seems reasonable to me that the large radiometric ages are simply a
consequence of mixing, and not related to ages at all, at least not
necessarily the ages of the rocks themselves. The fact that not all
of the argon is retained would account for smaller amounts of argon
near the surface, as I will explain below. This could happen because
of properties of the magma chambers, or because of argon being given
off by some rocks and absorbed by others.

I don’t see how one can possibly know that there are no tiny cracks in
rocks that would permit water and gas to circulate. The rates of
exchange that would mess up the dates are very tiny. It seems to me
to be a certainty that water and gas will enter rocks through tiny
cracks and invalidate almost all radiometric ages.

Let me illustrate the circulation patterns of argon in the earth’s
crust. About 2.5 percent of the earth’s crust is believed to be
potassium, and about 1/10,000 of this is K40 which decays to Ar40 with
a half life of 1.3 billion years. So argon is being produced
throughout the earth’s crust, and in the magma, all the time. In
fact, it probably rises to the top of the magma, artificially
increasing its concentration there. Now, some rocks in the crust are
believed not to hold their argon, so this argon will enter the spaces
between the rocks. Leaching also occurs, releasing argon from rocks.
Heating of rocks can also release argon. Argon is released from lava
as it cools, and probably filters up into the crust from the magma
below, along with helium and other radioactive decay products.

All of this argon is being produced and entering the air and water in
between the rocks, and gradually filtering up to the atmosphere. But
we know that rocks absorb argon, because correction factors are
applied for this when using K-Ar dating. So this argon that is being
produced will leave some rocks and enter others. The partial pressure
of argon should be largest deepest in the earth, and decrease towards
the surface. This would result in larger K-Ar ages lower down, but
lower ages nearer the surface.

As for K-Ar dating, here is a quote given above:

“As in all dating systems, the ages calculated can be affected by the
presence of inherited daughter products. In a few cases, argon ages
older than that of the Earth which violate local relative age patterns
have even been determined for the mineral biotite. Such situations
occur mainly where old rocks have been locally heated, which released
argon-40 into pore spaces at the same time that new minerals
grew. Under favourable circumstances the isochron method may be
helpful, but tests by other techniques may be required. For example,
the rubidium-strontium method would give a valid isotopic age of the
biotite sample with inherited argon.”

So this confirms that argon can travel from rock to rock when one rock
is heated. Now, argon is very soluble in magma, which can hold a lot
of it:

“Laboratory experiments have been conducted on the solubility of argon
in synthetic basaltic melts and their associated minerals.31, 32
Minerals and melts were held near 13000C at one atmosphere pressure in
a gas stream containing argon. After the material was quenched, the
researchers measured up to 0.34 ppm 40Ar within synthetic
olivine. They noted, ‘The solubility of Ar in the minerals is
surprisingly high’.33 Their conclusion is that argon is held primarily
in lattice vacancy defects within the minerals.”

I note that this concentration of argon, if it were retained in the
rock, would suffice to give it a geological age well over 500 nillion
years, assuming an average concentration of potassium. This is from a
paper by Austin available at
http://www.icr.org/research/sa/sa-r01.htm.
This paper also discusses Mount St. Helens K-Ar dating, and historic
lava flows and their excess argon.

So magma holds tremendous amounts of argon. Now, consider an
intrusive flow, which cools within the earth. All its argon will
either remain inside and give an old age to the flow, or will travel
through surrounding rock, where it can be absorbed by other rocks. If
one assumes that the amount of argon in the magma is consistent with
an age of 4 billion years, then there should be about 7/8 as much
argon 40 as potassium 40. For a rock 570 million years old, there
should be about 1/24 as much argon as potassium 40. So magma should
have at least 20 times as much argon as a rock 570 million years old
by K-Ar dating. In fact, the argon in the magma may well be even
higher, as it may concentrate near the top. This amount of argon is
enough to raise 20 times the volume of magma to a K-Ar age of 570
million years, and probably 200 times the volume of the magam to an
age of 57 million years. So one sees that there is a tremendous
potential for age increases in this way. It is not necessary for this
increase in age to happen all at once; many events of this nature can
gradually increase the K-Ar ages of rocks. In general, older rocks
should have more argon because they have been subject to more exposure
to such argon, but their true age is not necessarily related to their
K-Ar radiometric age.

We can also consider that most volcanoes and earthquakes occur at
boundaries between plates, so if the lava has flowed before, it is
likely to flow again nearby, gradually increasing the age. I
suppose earthquakes could also allow the release of argon from the
magma.

Other mechanisms include dissolving of rock, releasing its argon,
fracturing of rock, with release of argon, argon from cooling lava
under water entering the water and entering other rocks, and argon
from cooling lave entering subterranean water and being transported to
other rock. There are so many mechanisms that it is hard to know what
pattern to expect, and one does not need to rely on any one of them
(such as more argon in the magma in the past) to account for problems
in K-Ar dating.

Since even rocks with old K-Ar dates still absorb more argon from the
atmosphere in short time periods, it follows that rocks should absorb
quite a bit of argon over long time periods, especially at higher
pressures. In fact, if a rock can absorb only a ten millionth part of
argon, that should be enough to raise its K-Ar age to over 570 million
years, assuming an average amounts of potassium. It wouldn’t require
many internal cracks to allow a ten millionth part of argon to enter.
Also, as the rock deforms under pressure, more cracks are likely to
form and old ones are likely to close up, providing more opportunity
for argon (and other gases) to enter.

I mentioned a number of possibilities that could cause K-Ar dates to
be much older than the true ages of the rocks. Here is another way
that K-Ar dates can be too old: If we assume the earth went through a
catastrophe recently, then the crustal plates might have been
agitated, permitting lava and argon to escape from the magma. Thus a
lot of argon would be filtering up through the crust. As intrusive
flows of lava cooled inside the crust, they would have been in an
environment highly enriched in argon, and thus would not have gotten
rid of much of their argon. Thus they would have hardened with a lot
of argon inside. This would make them appear old. The same goes for
extrusive flows on the surface, since argon would be filtering up
through the earth and through the lava as it cooled.

The following was sent to me by a friend:

In areas where tremendous tectonic activity has taken place,
highly discordant values for the ages are obtained. The difficulties
associated are numerous and listed as follows:

1. There seems to be a great deal of question regarding the
branching ratio for K40 into Ar40 and Ca40. The value that has been
used for Ar40/Ca40 has varied from 0.12 to 0.08. But the value is not
really known. The observed value is between 0.11 and 0.126, but in
order to match K-Ar ages, which average somewhat higher [lower?] than
the U-Th-Pb ages, to the latter ages, the value 0.08 is arbitrarily
taken. However, this doesn’t remedy the situation and the ages are
still too high [low?]. The geochronologists credit this to “argon
leakage”.

2. There is far too much Ar40 in the earth for more than a
small fraction of it to have been formed by radioactive decay of K40.
This is true even if the earth really is 4.5 billion years old. In
the atmosphere of the earth, Ar40 constitutes 99.6% of the total
argon. This is around 100 times the amount that would be generated by
radioactive decay over the age of 4.5 billion years. Certainly this
is not produced by an influx from outer space. Thus, a large amount
of Ar40 was present in the beginning. Since geochronologists assume
that errors due to presence of initial Ar40 are small, their results
are highly questionable.

3. Argon diffuses from mineral to mineral with great ease. It
leaks out of rocks very readily and can move from down deep in the
earth, where the pressure is large, and accumulate in an abnormally
large amount in the surface where rock samples for dating are found.
They would all have excess argon due to this movement. This makes
them appear older. Rocks from deeper in the crust would show this to a
lesser degree. Also, since some rocks hold the Ar40 stronger than
others, some rocks will have a large apparent age, others smaller
ages, though they may actually be the same age. If you were to measure
Ar40 concentration as function of depth, you would no doubt find
more of it near the surface than at deeper points because it migrates
more easily from deep in the earth than it does from the earth into
the atmosphere. It is easy to see how the huge ages are being obtained
by the K40-Ar40 radiometric clock, since surface and near-surface
samples will contain argon due to this diffusion effect.

Some geochronologists believe that a possible cause of excess
argon is that argon diffuses into mineral progressively with
time. Significant quantities of argon may be introduced into a mineral
even at pressures as low as one bar.

...

If such [excessive] ages as mentioned above are obtained for
pillow lavas, how are those from deep-sea drilling out in the Atlantic
where sea-floor spreading is supposed to be occurring?

5. Potassium is found to be very mobile under leaching
conditions. As much as 80% of the potassium in a small sample of an
iron meteorite was removed by running distilled water over it for 4
and 1/2 hours. This could move the “ages” to tremendously high
values. Ground-water and erosional water movements could produce this
effect naturally.

6. Rocks in areas having a complex geological history have
many large discordances. In a single rock there may be mutually
contaminating, potassium- bearing minerals.

7. There is some difficulty in determining the decay constants
for the K40-Ar40 system. Geochronologists use the branching ratio as a
semi-emperical, adjustable constant which they manipulate instead of
using an accurate half-life for K40.

A number of recent lava flows (within the past few hundred years)
yield potassium-argon ages in the hundreds of thousands of years
range. This indicates that some excess argon is present. Where is it
coming from? And how do we know that it could not be a much larger
quantity in other cases? If more excess argon were present, then we
could get much older ages.

It is true that an age difference in the hundreds of thousands of
years is much too small to account for the observed K-Ar ages. But
excess argon is commonly invoked by geologists to explain dates that
are too old, so I’m not inventing anything new. Second, there may
have been a lot more more argon in the magma in the past, and with
each eruption, the amount decreased. So there would have been a lot
more excess argon in the past, leading to older ages.

For rocks that are being dated, contamination with atmospheric argon
is a persistent problem that is mentioned a number of times. Thus it
is clear that argon enters rock easily. It is claimed that we can
know if a rock has added argon by its spectrum when heated; different
temperatures yield different fractions of argon. It is claimed that
the argon that enters from the atmosphere or other rocks, is less
tightly bound to the crystal lattice, and will leave the rock at a
lower temperature. But how do we know what happens over thousands of
years? It could be that this argon which is initially loosely bound
(if it is so initially) gradually becomes more tightly bound by random
thermal vibrations, until it becomes undetectable by the spectrum
technique. The fact that rock is often under high pressure might
influence this process, as well.

Thus there are a number of sources of error. We now consider whether
they can explain the observed dates. In general, the dates that are
obtained by radiometric methods are in the hundreds of millions of
years range. One can understand this by the fact that the clock did
not get reset (if one accepts the fact that the magma “looks” old,
for whatever reason). That is, we can get both parent and daughter
elements from the magma inherited into minerals that crystallize out
of lava, making these minerals look old. Since the magma has old
radiometric dates, depending on how much the clock gets reset, the
crust can end up with a variety of younger dates just by partially
inheriting the dates of the magma.

Thus any method based on simple parent to daughter ratios such as
Rb-Sr dating is bound to be unreliable, since there would have to be a
lot of the daughter product in the magma already. And Harold Coffin’s
book Creation by Design lists a study showing that Rb-Sr dates are
often inherited from the magma.

Even the initial ratios of parent and daughter elements in the earth
do not necessarily indicate an age as old as 4.5 billion years.
Radioactive decay would be faster in the bodies of stars, which is
where scientists assume the heavy elements formed. Imagine a uranium
nucleus forming by the fusion of smaller nucleii. At the moment of
formation, as two nucleii collide, the uranium nucleus will be
somewhat unstable, and thus very likely to decay into its daughter
element. The same applies to all nucleii, implying that one could get
the appearance of age quickly. Of course, the thermonuclear reactions
in the star would also speed up radioactive decay. But isochrons
might be able to account for pre-existing daughter elements.

Furthermore, some elements in the earth are too abundant to be
explained by radioactive decay in 4.5 billion years (such as calcium,
argon, and, I believe, strontium). Some are too scarce (such as
helium). So it’s not clear to me how one can be sure of the 4.5
billion year age, even assuming a constant decay rate.

In general, potassium-argon dates appear to be older the deeper one
goes in the crust of the earth. We now consider possible explanations
for this.

There are at least a couple of mechanisms to account for this. In
volcano eruptions, a considerable amount of gas is released with the
lava. This gas undoubtedly contains a significant amount of argon 40.
Volcanos typically have magma chambers under them, from which the
eruptions occur. It seems reasonable that gas would collect at the
top of these chambers, causing artificially high K-Ar radiometric ages
there. In addition, with each successive eruption, some gas would
escape, reducing the pressure of the gas and reducing the apparent
K-Ar radiometric age. Thus the decreasing K-Ar ages would represent
the passage of time, but not necessarily related to their absolute
radiometric ages. As a result, lava found in deeper layers, having
erupted earlier, would generally appear much older and lava found in
higher layers, having erupted later, would appear much younger. This
could account for the observed distribution of potassium-argon dates,
even if the great sedimantary layers were laid down very recently. In
addition, lava emerging later will tend to be hotter, coming from
deeper in the earth and through channels that have already been warmed
up. This lava will take longer to cool down, giving more opportunity
for enclosed argon to escape and leading to younger radiometric ages.
A discussion of these mechanisms may be found at the Geoscience Research Institute
site.

Another factor is that rocks absorb argon from the air. It is
true that this can be accounted for by the fact that argon in the air
has Ar36 and Ar40, whereas only Ar40 is produced by K-Ar decay. But
for rocks deep in the earth, the mixture of argon in their environment
is probably much higher in Ar40, since only Ar40 is produced by
radioactive decay. As these rocks absorb argon, their radiometric
ages would increase. This would probably have a larger effect lower
down, where the pressure of argon would be higher. Or it could be
that such a distribution of argon pressures in the rocks occurred at
some time in the past. This would also make deeper rocks tend to have
older radiometric ages.

Recent lava flows often yield K-Ar ages of about 200,000
years. This shous that they contain some excess argon, and not all of
it is escaping. If they contained a hundred times more excess argon,
their K-Ar ages would be a hundred times greater, I suppose. And
faster cooling could increase the ages by further large factors. I
also read of a case where a rock was K-Ar dated at 50 million years,
and still susceptible to absorbing argon from the air. This shows
that one might get radiometric ages of at least 50 million years in
this way by absorbing Ar40 deep in the earth without much Ar36 or Ar38
present. If the pressure of Ar40 were greater, one could obtain even
greater ages.

Yet another mechanism that can lead to decreasing K-Ar ages with time
is the following, in a flood model: One can assume that at the
beginning of the flood, many volcanoes erupted and the waters became
enriched in Ar40. Then any lava under water would appear older
because its enclosed Ar40 would have more trouble escaping. As time
passed, this Ar40 would gradually pass into the atmosphere, reducing
this effect and making rocks appear younger. In addition, this would
cause a gradient of Ar40 concentrations in the air, with higher
concentrations near the ground. This also could make flows on the
land appear older than they are, since their Ar40 would also have a
harder time escaping.

Let us consider the question of how much different dating
methods agree on the geologic column, and how many measurements are
anomalous, since these points are often mentioned as evidences of the
reliability of radiometric dating. It takes a long time to penetrate
the confusion and find out what is the hard evidence in this area.

In the first place, I am not primarily concerned with dating
meteorites, or precambrian rocks. What I am more interested in is the
fossil-bearing geologic column of Cambrian and later age.

Now, several factors need to be considered when evaluating how
often methods give expected ages on the geologic column. Some of
these are taken from John Woodmoreappe’s article on the subject, but
only when I have reason to believe the statements are also generally
believed. First, many igneous formations span many periods, and so
have little constraint on what period they could belong to. The same
applies to intrusions. In addition, some kinds of rocks are not
considered as suitable for radiometric dating, so these are typically
not considered. Furthermore, it is at least possible that anomalies
are under-reported in the literature. Finally, the overwhelming
majority of measurements on the fossil bearing geologic column are all
done using one method, the K-Ar method. (And let me recall that both
potassium and argon are water soluble, and argon is mobile in rock.)
Thus the agreement found between many dates does not necessarily
reflect an agreement between different methods, but rather the
agreement of the K-Ar method with itself. For example, if 80 percent
of the measurements were done using K-Ar dating, and the other 20
percent gave random results, we still might be able to say that most
of the measurements on a given strata agree with one another
reasonably well. So to me it seems quite conceivable that there is no
correlation at all between the results of different methods on the
geologic column, and that they have a purely random relationship to
each other.

Let us consider again the claim that radiometric dates for a given
geologic period agree with each other. I would like to know what is
the exact (or approximate) information content of this assertion, and
whether it could be (or has been) tested statistically. It’s not as
easy as it might sound.

Let’s suppose that we have geologic periods G1 ... Gn. Let’s only
include rocks whose membership in the geologic period can be discerned
independent of radiometric dating methods. Let’s also only include
rocks which are considered datable by at least one method, since some
rocks (I believe limestone) are considered not to hold argon, for
example.

Now, we can take a random rock from Gi. We will have to restrict
ourselves to places where Gi is exposed, to avoid having to dig deep
within the earth. Let’s apply all known dating methods to Gi that are
thought to apply to this kind of rock, and obtain ages from each one.
Then we can average them to get an average age for this rock. We can
also compute how much they differ from one another.

Now we have to be careful about lava flows -- which geologic period do
they belong to? What about rocks that are thought not to have their
clock reset, or to have undergone later heating episodes? Just to
make the test unbiased, we will assign altitude limits to each
geologic period at each point on the earth’s surface (at least in
principle) and include all rocks within these altitude limits within
Gi, subject to the condition that they are datable.

The measurements should be done in a double-blind manner to insure
lack of unconscious bias.

For each geologic period and each dating method, we will get a
distribution of values. We will also get a distribution of averaged
values for samples in each period. Now, some claim is being made
about these distributions. It is undoubtedly being claimed that the
mean values ascend as one goes up the geologic column. It is also
being claimed that the standard deviations are not too large. It is
also being claimed that the different methods have distributions that
are similar to one another on a given geologic period.

The only correlation I know about that has been studied is between
K-Ar and Rb-Sr dating on precambrian rock. And even for this one, the
results were not very good. This was a reference by Hurley and Rand,
cited in Woodmorappe’s paper. As far as I know, no study has been
done to determine how different methods correlate on the geologic
column (excluding precambrian rock).

The reason for my request is that a correlation is not implied by the
fact that there are only 10 percent anomalies, or whatever. I showed
that the fact that the great majority of dates come from one method
(K-Ar) and the fact that many igneous bodies have very wide
biostratigraphic limits, where many dates are acceptable, makes the
percentage of anomalies irrelevant to the question I am asking. And
since this agreement is the strongest argument for the reliability of
radiometric dating, such an assumption of agreement appears to be
without support so far.

The question of whether different methods correlate on the geologic
column is not an easy one to answer for additional reasons. Since the
bulk of K-Ar dates are generally accepted as correct, one may say that
certain minerals are reliable if they tend to give similar dates, and
unreliable otherwise. We can also say that certain formations tend to
give reliable dates and others do not, depending on whether the dates
agree with K-Ar dates. Thus we can get an apparent correlation of
different methods without much of a real correlation in nature. It’s
also possible for other matter to be incorporated into lava as it
rises, without being thoroughly melted, and this matter may inherit
all of its old correlated radiometric dates. Coffin mentions that
fission tracks can survive transport through lava, for example. It
may also be that lava is produced by melting the bottom of continents
and successively different layers are melted with time, or there could
be a tendency for lighter isotopes to come to the top of magma
chambers, making the lava there appear older. But anyway, I think it
is important really to know what patterns appear in the data to try to
understand if there is a correlation and what could be causing it.
Not knowing if anomalies are always published makes this harder.

It is often mentioned that different methods agree on the K-T
boundary, dated at about 65 million years ago. This is when the
dinosaurs are assumed to have become extinct. This agreement of
different methods is taken as evidence for a correlation between
methods on the geologic column. One study found some correlated dates
from bentonite that are used to estimate the date of the K-T boundary.
I looked up some information on bentonite. It is composed of little
glass beads that come from volcanic ash. This is formed when lava is
sticky and bubbles of gas in it explode. So these small particles of
lava cool very fast. The rapid cooling might mean that any enclosed
argon is retained, but if not, the fact that this cooling occurs near
the volcano, with a lot of argon coming out, should guarantee that
these beads would have excess argon. As the gas bubble explodes, its
enclosed argon will be rushing outward along with these tiny bubbles
as they cool. This will cause them to retain argon and appear too
old. In addition, the rapid cooling and the process of formation
means that these beads would have Rb, Sr, U, and Pb concentrations the
same as the lava they came from, since there is no chance for crystals
to form with such rapid cooling. So to assume that the K-Ar dates,
Rb-Sr dates, and U-Pb dates all reflect the age of the lava, one would
have to assume that this lava had no Sr, no Pb, and that all the argon
escaped when the beads formed. Since the magma generally has old
radiometric ages, I don’t see how we could have magma without Pb or
Sr. In fact, I doubt that there is fresh uncrystallized lava anywhere
on earth today that has zero U/Pb and Rb/Sr ages, as would be required
if bentonite gave an accurate date for the K-T boundary. So to me it
seems to be certain that these ages must be in error.

Furthermore, the question arises whether bentonite always gives
correlated ages, and whether these ages always agree with the accepted
ages for their geologic period. I believe that bentonite occurs in a
number of formations of different geologic periods, so this could be
checked. If bentonite does not always give correlate and correct
ages, this calls into question its use for dating the K-T boundary.

Note that if there are small pockets in crystals where both parent and
daughter product can accumulate from the lava, then one can inherit
correlated ages from the lava into minerals. Thus even the existence
of correlations is not conclusive evidence that a date is correct.

If a date does not agree with the expected age of its geologic period,
and no plausible explanation can be found, then the date is called
anomalous. But if we really understand what is going on, then we
should be able to detect discrepant dates as they are being measured,
and not just due to their divergence from other dates.

Geologists often say that the percentage of anomalies is low. But
there are quite a number of rather outstanding anomalies in
radiometric dating that creationists have collected. These anomalies
are reported in the scientific literature. For example, one isochron
yielded a date of 10 billion years. A Rb-Sr isochron yielded a date
of 34 billion years. K-Ar dates of 7 to 15 billion years have been
recorded. It’s also not uncommon for two methods to agree and for the
date to be discarded anyway. Samples with flat plateaus (which should
mean no added argon) can give wrong dates. Samples giving no evidence
of being disturbed can give wrong dates. Samples that give evidence
of being disturbed can give correct dates. The number of dates that
disagree with the expected ages is not insignificant. I don’t know
what the exact percentage is.

Many dates give values near the accepted ones. But even these often
differ from one another by 10 or 20 percent. And quite a few other
dates are often much, much farther off. Whatever is making some of
these dates inaccurate could be making all of them inaccurate.

It’s interesting to note that in a few cases, old radiometric dates
are above young ones.

“It is obvious that radiometric techniques may not be the absolute
dating methods that they claimed to be. Age estimates on a given
geological stratum by different radiometric methods are often quite
different (sometimes by hundreds of millions of years). There is not
absolutely reliable long-term radiological ‘clock.’ The uncertainties
inherent in radiometric dating are disturbing to geologists and
evolutionists... [47]

As proof of the unreliability of the radiometric methods consider the
fact that in nearly every case dates from recent lava flows have come
back excessively large. One example is the rocks from the Kaupelehu
Flow, Hualalai Volcano in Hawaii which was known to have erupted in
1800-1801. These rocks were dated by a variety of different
methods. Of 12 dates reported the youngest was 140 million years and
the oldest was 2.96 billion years. The dates average 1.41 billion
years. [48]”

Another source said that about 5 or 6 of the historic lava flows give
ages in the hundreds of thousands of years. Geologists explain the
Kaupelehu date by the lava being cooled rapidly in deep ocean water
and not being able to get rid of its enclosed argon.

Here are some quotes from John Woodmorappe’s paper, “Radiometric
Geochronology Reappraised,” Creation Research Society Quarterly
16(2)102-29, p. 147, September 1979, that indicate that radiometric
dates are scattered, and that anomalies are often not reported:

“Improved laboratory techniques and improved constants have not
reduced the scatter in recent years. Instead, the uncertainty
grows as more and more data is accumulated ... ” (Waterhouse).

“In general, dates in the `correct ball park’ are assumed to be
correct and are published, but those in disagreement with other
data are seldom published nor are discrepancies fully explained.”
(Mauger)

“ ... the thing to do is get a sequence of dates and throw out
those that are vastly anomalous.” (Curtis et al)

“ ... it is usual to obtain a spectrum of discordant dates and to
select the concentration of highest values as the correct age.”
(Armstrong and Besancon).

“In general, strong discordances can be expected among ages deduced
by different methods.” (Brown and Miller)

Woodmorappe also mentions that very self-contradictory age spreads in
the Precambrian era are common.

In addition, Woodmorappe gives over 300 sets of dates “that are in
gross conflict with one another and with expected values for their
indicated paleontological positions.” This table is limited to dates
that approach 20% discrepancy, too old or too young. This does not
include dates from minerals that are thought to yield bad dates, or
from igneous bodies with wide biostrategraphic ranges, where many
dates are acceptable. He states that the number of dates within range
are less than the number of anomalies, except for the Cenozoic and
Cretaceous. When one adds in the fact that many anomalies are
unreported, which he gives evidence for, the true distribution is
anyone’s guess. He also combines evidence from the literature to
conclude that “somewhat less than half of all dates agree with 10% of
accepted values for their respective biostratigaphic positions.” I
believe this estimate even includes igneous bodies with very wide
biostrategraphic limits, and does not
include unpublished anomalies.

There have been criticisms of John Woodmorappe’s study, but no one has
given any figures from the literature for the true percentage of
anomalies, with a definition of an anomaly, or the degree of
correlation between methods. Steven Schimmrich’s review of this study
often concerns itself with John W’s presentation of geologists
explanation for anomalies, and not with the percentage of anomalies;
the later is my main concern.

Here are a couple of more quotes about anomalies:

“Situations for which we have both the carbon-14 and potassium-argon
ages for the same event usually indicate that the potassium-argon
`clock’ did not get set back to zero. Trees buried in an eruption of
Mount Rangotito in the Auckland Bay area of New Zealand provide a
prime example. The carbon-14 age of the buried trees is only 225
years, but some of the overlying volcanic material has a 465,000-year
potassium-argon age.”

[Harold Coffin, Origin by Design, page 400.]

A similar situation is reported in the December 1997 issue of Creation
ex nihilo in which lava with a K-Ar age of about 45 million years
overlays wood that was carbon dated by 3 laboratories using AMS dating
to about 35,000 years.

Still another evidence for problems with radiometric dating was given
in a recent talk I attended by a man who had been an evolutionist and
taken a course in radiometric dating. The teacher gave 14 assumptions
of radiometric dating and said something like “If creationists got a
hold of these, they could cut radiometric dating to pieces.”

Another evidence that all is not well with radiometric dating is
given in the following quote from Coffin p. 302:

“We find that most primary radioactive ores that have not been exposed
to weathering exist in secular equilibrium. Many sedimentary uranium
ores are not.”

Since equilibrium should be reached in 1 million years, this is a
problem for sediments that are assumed to be older than 1 million
years.

On another point, if we can detect minerals that were not molten with
the lava, as has been claimed, then this is one more reason why there
should be no anomalies, and radiometric dating should be a completely
solved problem. But that does not appear to be the case, at least
(especially) on the geologic column.

I’m not claiming that anomalous results are being hidden, just that
the agreement of a mass of results, none of which has much claim to
reliability, does not necessarily mean much.

Picking out a few cases where radiometric dates appear to be
well-behaved reminds me of evolutionary biologists focusing on a few
cases where there may be transitional sequences. It does not answer
the overall question. And as I said above, I’m also interested to
know how much of the fossil-bearing geologic column can be dated by
isochrons, and how the dates so obtained compare to others.

“K-Ar ages much greater than inferred earth age are also
common. Gerling et al called attention to some chlorites yielding
K-Ar dates of 7 to 15 b.y. It had been noted that some minerals which
yield such dates (as beryl, cordierite, etc.) can be claimed to have
trapped excess argon in their channel structures or to have fractioned
the Ar isotopes, but none of this can apply to the simple mica-like
structures of chlorite. They also pointed out that for the anomalies
to be accounted for by excess argon, unreasonably high partial
pressures of Ar during crystallization would have to be required.
They concluded by suggesting some unknown nuclear process which no
longer operates to have generated the Ar.”

This implies that excess argon is coming from somewhere. Here is
another quote from Woodmorappe about isochrons, since some people
think that mixing scenarios or other age-altering scenarios are
unlikely:

“Shafiqullah and Damon said: ‘The Ar40/Ar36 vs. K40/Ar36
isochrons are valid only when all samples of the system under
consideration have the same non-radiogenic argon composition. If this
condition does not hold, invalid ages and intercepts are obtained.
Models 2-9 yield isochron ages that are too high, too low, or in the
future, sometimes by orders of magnitude.’”

The fact that the only “valid” K-Ar isochrons are those for
which the concentration of non-radiogenic argon (Ar36) is constant,
seems very unusual. This suggests that what is occuring is some kind
of a mixing phenomenon, and not an isochron reflecting a true age.

“Processes of rock alteration may render a volcanic rock useless for
potassium-argon dating . . We have analyzed several devitrified
glasses of known age, and all have yielded ages that are too
young. Some gave virtually zero ages, although the geologic evidence
suggested that devitrification took place shortly after the formation
of a deposit.” *J.F. Evernden, et. al., “K / A Dates and Cenozoic
Mannalian Chronology of North America,” in American Journal of
Science, February 1964, p. 154.

One of the main arguments in favor of radiometric dating is that so
many dates agree with each other, that is, with the date expected for
their geologic period. But it’s not evident how much support this
gives to radiometric dating. If a rock dates too old, one can say
that the clock did not get reset. If it dates too young, one can
invoke a later heating event. Neither date would necessarily be seen
as anomalous. If lava intrudes upon geologic period X, then any date
for the lava of X or later will not be seen as anomalous. And even if
the date is one or two geologic periods earlier, it may well be close
enough to be accepted as non-spurious. If one does not know the
geologic period of a rock by other means, then of course one is likely
to date it to find out, and then of course the date agrees with the
geologic period and this will not be seen as anomalous. So it is
difficult to know what would be a reasonable test for whether
radiometric dating is reliable or not. The percentage of published
dates that are considered as anomalous has little bearing on the
question.

The issue about igneous bodies may need additional clarification. If
a lava flow lies above geologic period A and below B, then allowable
ages are anything at least as large as A and no larger than B. This
is called the biostratigraphic limit of the flow. Now, according to
Woodmorappe’s citations, many lava flows have no such limits at all,
and most of them have large limits. For example, a flow lying on
precambrian rock with nothing on top would have no limits on its
dates. And such flows often have a large internal scatter of dates,
but these dates are not considered as anomalies because of the
unrestricted biostratigraphic limit. Other flows with wide
biostratigraphic limits have weak restrictions on allowable dates.
This is one reason why just reporting the percentage of anomalies has
little meaning.

John W. states that very many igneous bodies have little or no
biostrategraphic limits, so just about any age is acceptable. Thus
these ages, though they generally have a considerable scatter, are not
considered as anomalies. He cites another reference that most igneous
bodies have wide biostrategraphic limits. Thus just by chance, many
dates will be considered within the acceptable ranges. If the igneous
body is constrained to have a date between that of geologic period X1
and X2, with times T1 and T2, and if we regard any date within 20
percent as non-anomalous, then any date between T1/1.2 and T2*1.2 will
be considered as non-anomalous, and this will include a considerable
portion of geologic history. Again, the percentage of anomalies means
nothing for the reliability of radiometric dating.

Now, igneous bodies can be of two types, extrusive and intrusive.
Extrusive bodies are lava that is deposited on the surface. These
cool quickly and have small crystals and form basalt. Intrusive
bodies are deposited in the spaces between other rocks. These cool
more slowly and have larger crystals, often forming granite. Both of
these tend on the average to have wide biostrategraphic limits,
meaning that a large spread of ages will be regarded as non-anomalous.
And if we recall that most radiometric dating is done of igneous
bodies, one sees that the percentage of anomalies is meaningless.
Thus we really need some evidence that the different methods agree
with each other.

To make the case even stronger, “Many discrepant results from
intrusives are rationalized away immediately by accepting the dates
but reinterpreting the biostrategraphic bracket,” according to John
Woodmorappe. This of course means that the result is no longer
anomalous, because the geologic period has been modified to fit the
date. Finally, the fact that the great majority of dates are from one
method means that the general (but not universal) agreement of K-Ar
dating with itself is sufficient to explain the small percentange of
anomalies (if it is small).

Now, the point about agreement is that whatever figure is given about
how often ages agree with the expected age, is consistent with the
fact that there is no agreement at all between K-Ar and other methods,
since so many measurements are done using K-Ar dating. And one of the
strongest arguments for the validity of radiometric dating is that the
methods agree. So I’m very interested to know what data there is
about how often _different_ methods agree.

So when one combines all of the above figures, the statement that
there are only 10 percent anomalies or 5 percent or whatever, does not
have any meaning any more. This statement is made so often as
evidence for the reliability of radiometric dating, that the simple
evidence that it has no meaning, is astounding to me. I don’t object
to having some hard evidence that there are real agreements between
different methods on the geologic column, if someone can provide it.
The precambrian rock is less interesting because it could have a
radiometric age older than life, but this is less likely for the rest
of the geologic column.

It’s not surprising that K-Ar dates often agree with the
assumed dates of their geological periods, since the dates of the
geological periods were largely inferred from K-Ar dating.

By the way, Ar-Ar dating and K-Ar dating are essentially the same
method, so between the two of them we obtain a large fraction of
the dates being used.

Before the discovery of radioactivity in the late nineteenth century,
a geological time scale had been developed on the basis of estimates
for the rates of geological processes such as erosion and
sedimentation, with the assumption that these rates had always been
essentially uniform. On the basis of being unacceptably old, many
geologists of the time rejected these early twentieth century
determinations of rock age from the ratio of daughter to radioactive
parent (large). By 1925, increased confidence in radioisotope dating
techniques and the demands of evolution theory for vast amounts of
time led to the establishment of an expanded geological time
scale. With the K-Ar dating techniques developed after World War II,
this time scale was refined to the standard Geologic Time Scale
adopted in 1964. The construction of this time scale was based on
about 380 radioisotope ages that were selected because of their
agreement with the presumed fossil and geological sequences found in
the rocks. Radioisotope ages that did not meet these requirements were
rejected on the basis of presumed chemical and/or physical
modifications that made the “ages” unreliable indicators of real
time. About 85% of the selections were K-Ar date s, 8%
rubidium-strontium dates, and 4% uranium-lead dates. Igneous rocks are
particularly suited to K-Ar dating. The crucial determiners are
therefore volcanic (extrusive igneous) rocks that are interbedded with
sediments, and intrusive igneous rocks that penetrate sediments.

This verifies what I said about almost all of the dates used to define
correct ages for geologic periods being K-Ar dates. Also, the
uncertainty in the branching ratio of potassium decay might mean that
there is a fudge factor in K-Ar ages of up to a third, and that the
occasional agreements between K-Ar ages and other ages are open to
question.

So the point is that there is now no reason to believe that radiometric
dating is valid on the geologic column.

Another issue is that sometimes the geologic periods of rocks are
revised to agree with the ages computed. This also makes data about
percentages of anomalies less meaningful.

It sometimes seems that reasons can always be found for bad dates,
especially on the geologic column. If a rock gives a too old date,
one says there is excess argon. If it gives a too young date, one
says that it was heated recently, or cannot hold its argon. How do we
know that maybe all the rocks have excess argon? It looks like
geologists are taking the “majority view” of K-Ar dating, but there is
no necessary reason why the majority of rocks should give the right
date.

The following quote is from the article by Robert H. Brown, cited
earlier:

What is a Radioisotope Age?

The relationship of a radioisotope age with real-time must be based on
an interpretation. A discussion of rubidium-strontium ages in the
Isotope Geoscience Section of the journal, Chemical Geology,
specifically states that a radioisotope age determination “does not
certainly define a valid age information for a geological system. Any
interpretation will reflect the interpreter’s presuppositions (bias).

Concerning the need for a double blind test, it would seem that there
are many places where human judgment could influence the distribution
of measured radiometric dates. It could increase the percentage of
anomalies, if they were regarded as more interesting. It could
decrease them, if they were regarded as flukes. Human judgment could
determine whether points were collinear enough to form an isochron.
It could determine whether a point can justifiably be tossed out and
the remaining points used as an isochron. It could determine whether
one should accept simple parent-to-daughter K-Ar ratios or whether
some treatment needs to be applied first to get better ages. It could
influence whether a spectrum is considered as flat, whether a rock is
considered to have undergone leaching or heating, whether a rock is
porous or not, or whether a sample has been disturbed in some way.

Since one of the main reasons for accepting radiometric dates (at
least I keep hearing it) is that they agree with each other, I think
that geologists have an obligation to show that they do agree,
specifically on the geologic column. Since we do not know whether or
how much human judgment is influencing radiometric dating, a double
blind study is most reasonable. And it should not be restricted to
just one or two well-behaved places, but should be as comprehensive as
possible.

Radiometric dating is predicated on the assumption that
throughout the earth’s history radioactive decay rates of the various
elements have remained constant. Is this a warranted assumption? Has
every radioactive nuclide proceeded on a rigid course of decay at a
constant rate? This has been challenged by studies involving Carbon
(C)-14.

At the temperature or pressure, collisions with stray cosmic
rays or the emanations of other atoms may cause changes other than
those of normal disintegration. It seems very possible that
spontaneous disintegration of radioactive elements are related to the
action of cosmic rays and the rate of disintegration varying from
century to century according to the intensity of the rays. The
evidence for a strongly increasing change in the cosmic ray influx is
most favorable especially in light of the decay of the earth’s
magnetic field.

Most geochronologists maintain that pleochroic haloes give
evidence that decay constants have not changed. Crystals of biotite,
for example, and other minerals in igneous or metamorphic rocks
commonly enclose minute specks of minerals containing uranium or
thorium. The a-(alpha) particles emitted at high velocity by the
disintegrating nuclides interact, because of their charge, with
electrons of surrounding atoms which slow them down until they finally
come to rest in the host material at a distance from their source that
depends on their initial kinetic energy and the density and
composition of the host. Where they finally stop to produce lattice
distortions and defects there generally occurs discoloring or
darkening. Each of the 8 a-particles emitted during the disintegration
of U238 to Pb206 produces a dark ring in biotite. Each ring has its
own characteristic radius in a given mineral (in this case
biotite). This radius measures the kinetic energy, hence the
probability of emission of the corresponding a-particle and also the
half-life of the parent nuclide according to the Geiger-Nuttall
law. The Geiger-Nuttall law is an empirical relation between half-life
of the a-emitter and the range in air of the emitted a-particles. If
the radii of these haloes from the same nuclide vary, this would imply
that the decay rates have varied and would invalidate these series as
being actual clocks. Are the radii in the rocks constant in size or
are there variable sizes?

Most of the early studies of pleochroic haloes were made by
Joly and Henderson. Joly concluded that the decay rates have varied on
the basis of his finding a variation of the radii for rocks of alleged
geological ages. This rather damaging result was explained away
saying that enough evidence of correct radii for defferent geologic
periods and sufficient variation in the same period have been obtained
that one is forced to look for a different explanation of such
variations as were observed by Joly.

Measurements were later made in an excellent collection of
samples with haloes. It was found that the extent of the haloes around
the inclusions varies over a wide range, even with the same nuclear
material in the same matrix, but all sizes fall into definite
groups. The measurements are, in microns, 5,7,10,17,20,23,27, and 33.

More recent studies have been made by Robert V. Gentry. Gentry
also finds a variation in the haloes leading him to conclude that the
decay constants have not been constant in time.

Gentry points out an argument for an instantaneous creation of
the earth. He noted form his studies of haloes: “It thus appears that
short half-life nuclides of either polonium, bismuth, or lead were
incorporated into halo nuclei at the time of mica crystallization and
significantly enough existed without the parent nuclides of the
uranium series. For the Po218 (half-life of 3 minutes) only a matter
of minutes could elapse between the formation of the Po218 and
subsequent crystallization of the mica; otherwise the Po218 would have
decayed, and no ring would be visible. The occurrence of these halo
types is quite widespread, one or more types having been observed in
the micas from Canada (Pre-Cambrian), Sweden, and Japan.” The
argument seems hard to refute.

So, then, careful scientists have measured variations in halo
radii and their measurements indicate a variation in decay rates. The
radioactive series then would have no value as time clocks.

The following quotation also suggests a cause for a change in the
decay rate:

Slusher (Slusher, H.S., 1981. Critique of Radiometric Dating,
Institute for Creation Research, Technical monograph 2 (2nd ed.), 46
pp, p. 55) cites F.B. Jueneman (Industrial Research, Sept., 1972,
p. 15) in the following speculation:
“The remnant of that local big bang is a pulsar called Vela-X (PSR
0833-45), which recent observations have positioned in the southern
sky some 1,500 light years away, and which is considered to have given
rise to the huge Gum Nebula ... Being so close, the anisotropic
neutrino flux of the super-explosion must have had the peculiar
characteristic of resetting all our atomic clocks.”

This is significant because it is known that neutrinos do interact
with the nucleii of atoms, and it is also believed that much of the
energy of supernovae is carried away by neutrinos.

Isochrons are an attempt to avoid the need for an absence of daughter
element initially in computing radiometric ages. The idea is that one
has a parent element, X, a daughter element, Y, and another isotope,
Z, of the daughter that is not generated by decay. One would assume
that initially, the concentration of Z and Y are proportional, since
their chemical properties are very similar. Radiometric decay would
generate a concentration of Y proportional to X. So we would obtain
an equation of the form

Y = c1*X + c2*Z

By taking enough measurements of the concentrations of X, Y, and Z, we
can solve for c1 and c2, and from c1 we can determine the radiometric
age of the sample. A good general introduction to isochrons from an
evolutionary perspective can be found at
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/isochron-dating.html.

Let’s apply this to potassium argon dating, where X is K40, Y is Ar40,
and Z is probably Ar36. If the concentration of K varies in a rock,
that it is unlikely for the concentration of added argon 40 to vary in
a way that will yield an isochron. But if the concentration of K does
not vary, then one can still get an isochron if the concentration of
the non-radiogenic isotope Ar36 of the daughter product varies. So
let’s call an isochron a “super-isochron” if the concentration of the
parent element varies from one sample to another. Let’s call it a
“wimpy isochron” otherwise. The question is, what percentage of
isochrons are super-isochrons, and how do their dates agree with the
conventional dates for their geologic period? I would think that it
may be rare to have a super-isochron. If one is dealing with minerals
that exclude parent or daughter, then one cannot get an isochron at
all. If one is dealing with minerals that do not exclude parent and
daughter elements, then most likely the parent element will be evenly
distributed everywhere, and one will have a wimpy isochron that cannot
detect added daughter product, and thus may give unreliable ages.
Whole rock isochrons may also tend to be wimpy, for the same reason.
Even super isochrons can yield ages that are too old, due to mixings,
however.

False K-Ar isochrons can be produced if a lava flow starts out
with a lot of excess Ar40 which becomes well mixed, along with
potassium. Then while cooling or afterwards, a mixture of Ar36 and
Ar40 can enter the rock, more in some places than others. Other
isotopes of argon would work as well. I believe that this will
produce a good K-Ar isochron, but the age calculated will be
meaningless.

There is another way that false isochrons can be produced. For a
wimpy isochron, say a K-Ar isochron, we can assume that initially
there is a uniform concentration of K everywhere, and concentrations
of Ar40 and Ar36 that form an isochron. Then a lot of Ar40 enters,
uniformly, through cracks in the rock or heating. This will retain
the isochron property, but will make the isochron look too old.

My reasoning was that if the lava is thoroughly mixed, then the
concentration of parent material should be fairly constant. If the
concentration of parent substance is not constant, it could indicate
that the lava is not thoroughly mixed. Or it could have other
explanations. If the lava is not thoroughly mixed, it is possible to
obtain an isochron from the mixing of two different sources, in which
case the radiometric age is inherited from the sources, and does not
necessarily yield the age of the flow.

Someone pointed out to me that many Rb-Sr isochrons are super
isochrons. I find this information very interesting, and thank him
for it. I’d be curious to know which strata they occur in, as my main
interest is the geologic column of Cambrian and above. My impression
is that these are not on this part of the geologic column. And how
well do the dates correlate with others for the same formation?

There are also mixing scenarios that can produce even super isochrons
having invalid ages. And geologists admit in any event that isochrons
can sometimes give false ages.

Here is a mixing scenario for false isochrons. Consider this
possibility: There are two sources of lava, A and B. Suppose these
mix together so that at point 0 we have only A, at point 1 we have
only B, and in between we have varying concentrations. Half way
between there is a mixture of half A and half B, for example. Suppose
X is a parent substance, Y is its daughter, and Z is a non-radiogenic
isotope of the daughter. Suppose A has a little X and lots of Y and
not much Z, all uniformly distributed, and B has some mixture of Y and
Z, all uniformly distributed. Then this varying mixture of A and B,
with all A at 0 and all B at 1, produces a good isochron. There is no
way this mixture can be distinguished from a similar case in which A
has lots of X and little Y, and B is the same as before, and a lot of
time passes.

It is claimed that mixing can often be detected. If this is so, then
the question remains, for super isochrons on the geologic column which
can be shown not to be caused by mixing, how do they correlate with
other methods, and with the expected dates for their geologic
period?

My understanding is that isochrons measure the time since a rock was
last well mixed. For a lava flow, this could be the time of the flow.
Or it could be that several flows all come from the same well-mixed
magma, and might yield a joint isochron giving the time of the flow.
It seems to me that a single lava flow might not mix well, and thus
the age obtained would be that of the magma and not the time of the
flow. So this points out another problem with interpretation of
isochrons.

I’m also curious to know how much of the geologic column is datable by
super isochrons for which no mixing can be shown.

One often hears about K-Ar dates of the Atlantic Ocean bottom which
increase from zero at the mid-Atlantic ridge to about 150 million
years at the edges. This is taken as proof that the continents began
separating about 150 million years ago. However, this can be
explained by assuming that argon rises to the top of the magma, so
magma deeper down looks younger. The magma deeper down would have
come to the surface later, and thus would be nearer to the
mid-Atlantic ridge. Or if the continents split quickly, the observed
pattern of dates could be explained by a decreasing concentration of
Ar40 in the water. In any event, I don’t see how the lava in the
center of the Atlantic could have a young age in the conventional
view, since it would have cooled rapidly under a lot of water, and
would have retained its argon, making it look old.

An evolutionist said his experience is that whenever he looks into a
creationist source, it blows up on him. My experience is that
whenever I look into an evidence for evolution or (now) the
reliability of radiometric dating on the geologic column, it blows up
on me, too.

I don’t deny that there is some degree of plausibility to
radiometric dating, although I have to wonder if many field geologists
secretly have their doubts about it. My concern is instead to know
how much stamina the evidence has against other evidence that may call
it into question. My conclusion for the geologic column is, not much.

Here is some more material from my web site bearing on the question of
the age of the geologic column:

It is also of interest in regard to radiometric dating that Robert
Gentry claims to have found “squashed” polonium haloes as well as
embryonic uranium radiohaloes in coal deposits from many geological
layers claimed to be hundreds of millions of years old. (See the
Oct. 15, 1976 issue of Science.) These haloes represent particles of
polonium and uranium which penetrated into the coal at some point and
produced a halo by radioactive decay. The fact that they are squashed
indicates that part of the decay process began before the material was
compressed, so the polonium had to be present before compression.
Since coal is relatively incompressible, Gentry concludes that these
particles of uranium and polonium must have entered the deposit before
it turned to coal. However, there is a very small amount of lead with
the uranium; if the uranium had entered hundreds of millions of years
ago, then there should be much more lead. The amount of lead present
is consistent with an age of thousands rather than millions of years.
It’s hard to believe, according to conventional geological time
scales, that this coal was compressed any time within the past several
thousand or even hundred million years.

Here is a quote from Coffin, page 306, about Gentry’s findings:

“Coalified wood from Triassic and Jurassic sediments (225- to
135-million-year conventional geologic age) contains radiohaloes.
Published lead-206/uranium-238 ratios for their inclusion centers may
be expressed in terms of uranium-lead radioisotope ages ranging
between 236 thousand and 2.9 million years. No presently available
experimental evidence would exclude the possibility that essentially
all the lead-206 in the halo centers was introduced together with the
uranium (either directly or as parent polonium-210 or lead-210) and
thus did not accumulate from uranium.”

In fact, a couple of the haloes have ages consistent with an origin
thousands of years ago.

Thus the amount of lead with the uranium is consistent with an age in
the hundreds of thousands to millions of years range, much too small
for conventional geologic time. And it is reasonable to assume that
almost all of this lead came with the uranium, rather than being a
result of decay, suggesting that the true age could be much younger
than this.

Note that this phenomenon of squashed haloes appears in different coal
deposits in different geologic formations, and all give about the same
U-Pb ages. The squashing is in the vertical direction, and I can’t
think of any way this could happen at a time later than the burial of
the logs or whatever under a lot of sediment. Coal is not water
soluble (at least, coal cars aren’t covered, and no one seems to worry
about thunderstorms dissolving the coal away), and wood is waterproof,
so one would expect that coalified wood would also be waterproof.
Coal has small pores. If it had cracks, they would have to be small,
since the cell structure is still visible. And if there was a flow of
water, it would be more likely to remove soluble uranium than
insoluble lead, making the date older. But it is possible that small
cracks exist and that uranium could be deposited by a flow of water at
some more recent date.

If there were such cracks, we would expect uranium to be entering at
regular intervals, and to give a range of ages up to about 225 million
years or even higher due to lead being introduced with the uranium.
But note that all of the haloes give young ages. The fact that all
the ages are so young suggests that the coal is young, too.

It seems most likely that the uranium entered at the same time as the
polonium. The fact that so many of the polonium haloes are squashed
indicates that the polonium entered before the wood was covered with
sediement. I think the most reasonable explanation is that this coal
has an age at most a few millions of years old, possibly much younger,
and that the geologic time scale is in error. Some of the haloes have
ages of 200,000 or 300,000 years, so the true age would have to be
this or younger. This applies to several geologic periods. In fact,
a couple of the haloes have such low ratios as to imply an age in the
thousands of years.

Another possible objection made by an evolutionist is that the radon
222 that results from uranium decay is an inert gas and may have
escaped, resulting in little lead being deposited. This would make
the observed haloes consistent with an old age for the coal. However,
the fact that these uranium haloes are embryonic (very faint) also
argues for a young age. In addition, not all of the radon would be on
the surface of the particles of uranium. That which was inside or
bordering on coal would likely not be able to escape. Since radon 222
has a half-life of about 4 days, it would not have much time to
escape, in any event. Such haloes were also found in shale, with
young U/Pb ages as well, and it may be less likely for the radon to
escape from shale.

Dr. Libby, the discoverer of the C14 method, which won for him a Nobel
prize, expressed his shock that human artifacts extended back only
5000 years, a finding totally in conflict with any evolutionary
concept. Older dates were found to be very unreliable (CRSQ , 1972,
9:3, p.157). By this time tens of thousands of C14 dates have been
published from tests performed by various laboratories around the
world. In the annual volumes in which the dates are published,
concerns have been expressed about many relatively young dates that
violate established geological age notions. One example given was
Ice-Age materials that were dated by C14 to fall within the Christian
era (CRSQ , 1969, 6:2, p.114). In his book on prehistoric America,
Ceram notes a classic case of the difficulties that befall C14
dating. Bones 30,000 years old were found lying above wood dated at
16,000 years (Ceram, 1971, p.257-259).

Another classic C14 problem was noted for Jarmo, a prehistoric village
in northern Iraq. Eleven samples were dated from the various strata
and showed a 6000-year spread from oldest to most recent. Analysis of
all the archaeological evidence, however, showed that the village was
occupied no more than 500 years before it was finally abandoned
(Custance, 1968, Mortar samples can be given normal C14 tests since
mortar absorbs carbon dioxide from the air. Mortar, however, from
Oxford Castle in England gave an age of 7,270 years. The castle was
built about 800 years ago. The kind of contamination is
unclear. Living trees near an airport were dated with C14 as l0,000
years old, because the wood contained contamination from plane exhaust
(CRSQ , 1970, 7:2, p.126; 1965, 2:4, p.31). p.19).

[I wouldn’t be surprised if these last 2 examples have simple
explanations.]

C14 analysis of oil from Gulf of Mexico deposits showed an age
measured in thousands of years - not millions. Data produced by the
Petroleum Institute at Victoria, New Zealand, showed that petroleum
deposits were formed 6,000-7,000 years ago. Textbooks state that
petroleum formation took place about 300,000,000 years ago
(Velikovsky, 1955, p.287; CRSQ , 1965, 2:4, p.10). Fossil wood was
found in an iron mine in Shefferville, Ontario, Canada, that was a
Precambrian deposit. Later the wood was described as coming from Late
Cretaceous rubble, which made it about 100 million years old instead
of more than 600 million years old. Two independent C14 tests showed
an age of about 4000 years (Pensee , Fall 1972, 2:3, p.43).

The last major glacial advance in America was long dated at about
25,000 years ago. C14 dates forced a revision down to 11,400
years. The United State Geological Survey carried out studies that
gave a C14 date as recent as 3300 years ago, but no text treats such a
puzzling find that falls well within historic times (Velikovsky, 1955,
p.158-159; CRSQ , 1968, 5:2, p.67). Here is a remarkable example of
C14 difficulties in a book published by Stanford University Press. Six
C14 ages were determined from a core in an attempt to date the
formation of the Bering Land Bridge. The dates ranged from 4390 to
15,500 Before Present.

The first problem was that the results were so disarranged from bottom
to top of the core that no two samples were in the correct order. Then
the oldest date was discarded because it was ‘inconsistent’ with other
tests elsewhere. Next the remaining dates were assumed to be
contaminated by a fixed amount, after which the authors concluded that
the delta under study had been formed 12,000 years ago (Hopkins, 1967,
p.110-111). ... Even more astonishing is this cynical statement made
at a symposium of Nobel Prize winners in Uppsala, Sweden, in 1969: If
a C14 date supports our theories, we put it in the main text. If it
does not entirely contradict them, we put it in a footnote. And if it
is completely ‘out of date,’ we just drop it (Pensee , Winter 1973,
p.44).

As for the contamination issue, someone asserted that any C14 date of
30,000 years or more is due to contamination. If this is so, then why
do they say the method is accurate to 50,000 years? If any C14 date
has ever yielded a value over 30,000 years, this implies that such
contamination is not ubiquitous. Of course, it could be that older
measurement techniques were less accurate. Now, 30,000 years is about
5 half lives of C14, which means that a contamination of 1/32
(slightly less) would be required to achieve this date for a sample of
infinite age. This is a substantial contamination.

Anyway, as for C14 dating in general, it seems clear that many, many
results are much too young according to the standard view, and that
explaining away one or two of them does not appreciably diminish the
problem.

Here is another instance of an anomalously young carbon 14 date:

At the 1992 Twin Cities Creation Conference, there was a paper
presented called “Direct Dating of Cretaceous-Jurassic Fossils (and
Other Evidences for Human-Dinosaur Coexistence)”. Among other things,
the results of carbon-dating of Acrocanthosaurus bones are given.

The authors noted that dinosaur bones are frequently (“as a rule”)
found with a black carbon residue of some sort on the bones. The
authors speculated that this residue could be the leftovers of the
decayed skin and flesh: they quote the Penguin Geology Encyclopedia’s
definition of “carbonization”: “Carbonization; the reduction of
organic tissue to a carbon residue. An unusual kind of fossilization
in which the tissue is preserved as a carbon film. Plants are
commonly preserved in this manner, soft-bodied animals more rarely.”
Since this material is organic, it can be used to carbon-date the
fossils.

The authors describe in detail the measures taken to ensure that no
other source of carbon contamination was present inside or outside the
bones. When the bones were ground up and carbon-dated, the dates they
received from the lab from different methods were 9,890 to 36,500
years BP (before present).

Some have claimed that this bone was covered with shellac, causing the
carbon 14 date to be young. Concerning this issue, one individual
sent me the following information:

In this paper, the authors describe in detail the measures taken to
ensure that no other source of carbon contamination was present inside
or outside the bones.

The fact that these are separate papers, and the fact that every
attempt was made to avoid contamination, suggests that these are two
different incidents. I also received the following information from
another person:

As far as I can ascertain from the paper, the researchers responsible
specifically mention that the dinosaur bones being dated were not
coated with shellac (page 10). Otherwise, the details of the material
at your website are as in the paper, and the comment about a black
carbon residue around fossilised dinosaur bones is referenced in their
paper to a secular source, so it is not simply their observation. The
comments from the Penguin Geology Encyclopedia merely add to their
case.

However, of the results they give in their paper, I personally would
only be comfortable with the AMS results obtained on the same sample
in two different laboratories - the one at 25,750+/-280 years BP and
the other at 23,760+/-270 years BP. The other results were obtained
on unspecified equipment or via the less reliable older beta
technology and generally appear not to have been cross-checked in
another laboratory.

Again I confirm that the claim about the shellac appears to be totally
false and merely a smokescreen to avoid the implications of an
uncomfortable radiocarbon date.

So, based on all of this information, it looks like there were two
separate incidents, and the one I referred to involved a dinosaur bone
that was not covered with shellac, but still gave a young carbon 14
date.

A survey of the 15,000 radiocarbon dates published through the year
1969 in the publication, Radiocarbon, revealed the following
significant facts:27 a. Of the dates of 9671 specimens of trees,
animals, and man, only 1146 or about 12 percent have radiocarbon ages
greater than 12,530 years.

b. Only three of the 15,000 reported ages are listed as “infinite.”

c. Some samples of coal, oil, and natural gas, all supposedly many
millions of years old, have radiocarbon ages of less than 50,000
years.

d. Deep ocean deposits supposed to contain remains of the most
primitive life forms are dated within 40,000 years.

I think it is interesting that so few specimens have old dates,
suggesting a rapid increase in the amount of carbon 14 in the
atmosphere.

On the same subject, some fossils from the Paluxy River are
“anomalous” as well. Carbonized (burnt) wood was discovered in
Cretaceous limestone, and dated to 12,800 to 45,000 YBP.

Coffin gives quite a bit of evidence from increases of C14 ages with
depth that the concentration of C14 has increased rapidly in recent
years, making C14 dates too old, especially after about 4000 years
ago. The fact that C14 is still increasing in the atmosphere shows
that the earth recently went through some kind of a catastrophe, and
this increase is even admitted by some evolutionists.

It has been claimed that Carbon 14 dating was revolutionized in 1969
or so. But it remains to establish how much in error the old dates
were. It seems to be a common pattern that when dating methods are
revised, we are told how inaccurate the old methods were, but are not
told how inaccurate the current methods are.

Consider this: if a specimen is older than 50,000 years, it has been
calculated that it would have such a small amount of C14 that for
practical purposes it would show an infinite radiocarbon age. So it
was expected that most deposits such as coal, gas, etc. would be
undatable by this method. In fact, of thousands of dates in the
journals Radiocarbon and Science to 1968, only a handful were classed
“undatable” - most were of the sort which should have been in this
category. This is especially remarkable with samples of coal and gas
supposedly produced in the Carboniferous period 300 million years ago!
Some examples of dates which contradict orthodox (evolutionary) views:

Coal from Russia from the “Pennsylvanian,” supposedly 300 million
years old, was dated at 1,680 years. (Radiocarbon, vol. 8, 1966).

Natural gas from Alabama and Mississippi (Cretaceous and Eocene,
respectively) should have been 50 million to 135 million years old,
yet C14 gave dates of 30,000 to 34,000 years,
respectively. (Radiocarbon, vol. 8, 1966. Many of the earlier
radiocarbon dates on objects such as coal and gas, which should be
undatable, have been attributed to contamination from, for example,
workers’ fingerprints, creationist researchers are currently working
on the construction of an apparatus, using existing technology, to
look for very low levels of C14 activity in, for example, coal after
excluding contamination. Such low-level activity would not be expected
on the basis of old earth theory, and so is not looked for at
present.)

Bones of a sabre-toothed tiger from the LaBrea tar pits (near Los
Angeles), supposedly 100,000-one million years old, gave a date of
28,000 years. (Radiocarbon, vol. 10, 1968)

One way to infer how the atmospheric concentration of carbon-14
changed in the past is by tree-ring dating. Some types of trees, that
grow at high elevations and have a steady supply of moisture, reliably
add only one ring each year. In other environments, multiple rings can
be added in a year. 4 The thickness of a tree ring depends on the
tree’s growing conditions, which will naturally vary from year to
year. Some rings may even show frost or fire damage. By comparing
sequences of ring thicknesses in two different trees, a correspondence
can sometimes be shown. Ring patterns will correlate strongly for two
trees of the same species that grew near each other at the same
time. Weaker correlations (or less confident matches) exist between
trees of different species growing simultaneously in different
environments. Claims are frequently made that wood growing today can
be matched up with some scattered pieces of dead wood so that
tree-ring counts can be extended back more than 8,600 years. This may
not be true.

These claimed “long chronologies” begin with either living trees or
dead wood that can be accurately dated by historical methods. This
carries the chronology back perhaps 3,500 years. Then the more
questionable links are established based on the judgment of a
tree-ring specialist. Standard statistical techniques could establish
just how good the dozen or more supposedly overlapping tree-ring
sequences are. However, tree-ring specialists refuse to subject their
judgments to these statistical tests, and they have not released their
data so others can carry out these statistical tests. 5

There are some general problems with constructing a chronology by
piecing together records of tree rings from different trees. When
trying to find the best solution to a problem like this, there are
generally a huge number of possible solutions. So one uses a
heuristic program to try to find a good one. There may also be many
other solutions that are nearly as good. In fact, there may be others
that are even better. So it’s not clear to me that there is one
clear-cut chronology based on tree ring dating. It was claimed
that carbon 14 levels were not considered at all in constructing this
chronology. I’d like to have his reference for that. In such a case,
one typically defines a goodness function for each solution, and this
could incorporate the desire to maintain a nearly constant carbon 14
level in the atmosphere. Add to this the fact that different trees
can respond differently to the same climatic condition, and the fact
that trees sometimes have more than one ring (especially if there is
more than one rainy season per year) and one has even more
uncertainty. Without a very thorough examination of the data, it’s
hard to know how to interpret the result. I’d be interested to know
what the authors of this work say about the existence of other
chronologies, and how much less of a good fit they are.

In such an optimization problem, it is difficult to know if one has
the true solution, so not much weight should be given to the
chronology obtained. It’s not enough just to eyeball it and say it
looks convincing. It should be subjected to several optimization
procedures and one should also optimize for shorter chronologies as
well to see how much (if any) the quality suffers.

Someone gave me some information about constructing tree ring
chronologies by piecing together sub-chronologies. But in a problem
like this, sometimes one can get a better solution in the end by
taking a sub-optimal choice along the way. So the described procedure
will not necessarily find the best chronology.

The following message was sent to me by e mail on February 11,
1998:

As one who has taught dendrochronnology, I have a few opinions on this
particular subject. Also, one of my graduate students went to work
for Ferguson in his lab at U of A, and in fact was the curator of his
work after his death, and is presently probably the only one who knows
anything about how he [Ferguson] produced the bristlecone chronology.
Another of my graduate students gave a seminar to the lab on
dendrochronology of fossil trees and had ample opportunity to analyze
the procedures there, and to work with Ferguson for a while. I can
say on pretty firm grounds that the Bristlecone chronology before
4000bp is fraught with problems and unanswered questions. While
Ferguson was alive, he never allowed anyone to analyze his original
data or the bases for the many suppositions that went into the
establishment of the chronology. Thus the chronology was not subjected
to the normal rigors of science. This is regrettable, because I
believe he was a careful and sincere scientist. Of course one could
always excuse Ferguson for not revealing the bases of his decisions
(for example, the most important rings in any chronology are the
“missing rings” which have to be added by the investigator). But
suffice to say the chronology before 4000bp is entirely dependent on
C14 dates of the wood, and is thus tautologous. This does not mean it
is meaningless or necessarily wrong, just that I wouldn’t base too
much on it.

Some coral formations apparently show a longer year in the past, of
about 400 days. This is taken as a confirmation of radiometric
dating, since the earth’s rotation should be gradually slowing down
due to the effect of the moon and tides. Here is some information
that was sent to me by a proponent of this method:

How does a flood explain the accuracy of “coral clocks”? The moon is
slowly sapping the earth’s rotational energy. The earth should have
rotated more quickly in the distant past, meaning that a day would
have been less than 24 hours, and there would have been more days per
year. Corals can be dated by the number of “daily” growth layers per
“annual” growth layer. Devonian corals, for example, show nearly 400
days per year. There is an exceedingly strong correlation between the
“supposed age” of a widerange of fossils (corals, stromatolites, and a
few others -- collected from geologic formations throughout the column
and from locations all over the world) and the number of days per year
that their growth pattern shows. The agreement between these clocks,
and radiometric dating, and the theory of superposition... is a little
hard to explain away as the result of a number of unlucky coincidences
in a 300-day-long flood.

Clocks tied to the Earth’s rotational energy lack the precision of
isotopic dating methods, and they are only applicable to a small
number of formations which have excellent preservation of fairly small
details. However, they do provide an excellent (if rough)
confirmation of the isotopic methods’ accuracy.

The computation of the slowdown of the earth’s rotation is not simple,
however. If one extrapolates the current slowdown backwards, one
obtains a rate that is too fast. So a correction is applied for
resonances of the moon with tides. To me this is rather involved, and
not convincing.

Also, if the earth was rotating faster in the past, it was not
necessarily due to the elapse of time and the slowdown from tides.
The earth could have been rotating faster more recently if there had
been some kind of a catastrophe. There was even an article in
Science, 25 July 1997, titled “Evidence for a Large-Scale
Reorganization of Early Cambrian Continental Masses ...” in which the
authors propose that at one time the lithosphere rotated 90 degrees.
If we can assume the axis of rotation or crust of the earth are in
motion for some reason, this could cause an apparent change in the
length of the year. Maybe some event in the core of the earth or some
gyroscopic effect or some asteriod impact would cause this. So it’s
not clear that one can even take a longer year from coral records as
confirmation of assumed geologic time.

It is also possible that different lengths of the year in the past are
due to unusual patterns of ocean currents or temperature or
availability of nutrients, and not to the length of the year. Just
having summer 20 days early one year and 20 days late the next might
make the year seem 400 days long. If the axis of the earth were
vertical in the past, there would have been no seasons at all, and the
apparent years could have been caused by any number of factors.

Here is another scenario that could explain a different period for the
year in recent history. Suppose a nearby supernova showered the earth
with elementary particles, many of which passed through matter while
only weakly interacting with it. But suppose that there were enough
such particles to destabilize the nucleii of atoms slightly. This
would not have much effect on most nucleii, but it would cause
radioactive nucleii to decay. Thus one would have a rapid increase in
the decay rate, which would make the matter of the earth and planets
appear old very quickly. This would generate a lot of heat, which
could lead to many volcano eruptions. It could also lead to
convection currents in the core of the earth, redistributing the mass
there and causing the rotation of the earth to speed up or slow down
dramatically. Of course, this would lead to a major, worldwide
catastrophe. In addition, there might be unusual gyroscopic effects.
At the same time, the heating effect on another planet could have
caused it to explode, producing the asteroids. At any rate, one could
get changes in the length of year this way in recent history.

Varves are thin repetitive sedimentary layers that are used to argue
for a long history of the earth. It is claimed that one varve was
deposited each year. But to me, the fact that they show so little
evidence of erosion or any kind of activity between the layers is
suspicious -- they are all so flat and even. In addition, many
well-preserved fossil fish are found in the Green River varves. This
is an evidence that these varves were laid down rapidly. (Experiments
have shown that if fish are not buried rapidly, the bones fall
apart.)

It is also often claimed that the growth of coral reefs to their
current size would require very long time periods. Coffin shows that
coral reefs can grow very fast when they are farther from the surface
of the ocean. At the surface, the growth rate slows due to water
action and various other factors. So coral reefs are also not an
evidence for a long history of the earth since the origin of life.

Here are some quotes from “The Age of the Universe: What Are the
Biblical Limits?,” 1998, by Gorman Gray, pp. 118 - 119, supporting the
idea that the geologic column was laid down catastrophically:

“... deposits above the `great unconformity’ (the boundary between
Precambrian and Cambrian) are now thought by most geologists to have
been deposited rapidly and catastrophically. ... The evidence is
ubiquitous for catastophic deposits. Evolutionary geologists now
acknowledge numerous local catastrophes to account for many different
regions while refusing to accept the very simple explanation of
one cataclysm responsible for all of them.”

“Although the well-informed leadership in geology realizes that
catastrophism is evident everywhere, it is not known so well at the
university level.”

“Even though the basic concept of uniformitarian gradualism
for deposited strata has been overthrown, curiously there has
been no adjustment in the dates applied to the geologic column.
It appears that there are strong forces to hold on to the
millions of years concept of geology (in spite of the facts)
in order to preserve the supposed time for evolution to occur.”

“Evolutionary geologists now hypothesize millions of years of
non-activity between formations in order to preserve the evolutionary
time schedule. There is no evidence supporting numerous hiatuses.
One would think in even a thousand years there would be roots or worm
burrows or stream erosion or clam tracks. Instead, most of the
interfaces are sharply defined. Evolutionists are saying essentially
that no evidence means evidence for long periods of time between
formations.”

“After these discoveries, geologists began looking at the well-known
formations throughout the world and discovered that most of them
showed the characteristics of turbidite formation. Over half the
depositions on North America have now been identified as turbidities
and each year of study yields more which are falling to this concept.”

“The latter [sedimentary layers of Cambrian or later age] are
worldwide phenomena and many of the formations cover areas of hundreds
or thousands of square miles. ... gradual deposition is precluded in
the nature of turbidite formations.”

I note that turbidities are formed rapidly by flows under water, but
have a layered structure. The point of these quotes is that much of
the geologic column is now recognized to have been laid down in this
manner, now over half of the formations in North America. At present,
there is hardly anywhere where this kind of turbidity activity is
depositing a significant amount of sediment that will remain for any
length of time. River deltas are about as close as one can come, and
they are generally not flat like the great sedimentary deposits, and do
not cover such a large area. So the evidence is that conditions in
the past when these deposits were being laid down were much different
than at present. Also, the fact that there is no worldwide
unconformity above the Great Unconformity suggests that there was no
break in this continuous pattern of deposition, and that the geologic
column (up to some point, maybe somewhere in the Mesozoic) was laid
down all at once.

There are many evidences of catastrophic conditions in the geologic
column, such as polystrate fossils, and fossils giving evidence of
rapid burial. For example, a fossil of an 80 to 90 foot baleen whale
was found by miners in diatomaceous earth near Lompoc, California.
Here is the quote, from Coffin, page 37, about the Baleen whale:

“A recent discovery has caused scientists to begin rethinking the
origin of the deposit. Miners found an 80 to 90 foot baleen whale in
the white earth. If a long time was required to cover the huge
mammal, the bones would not have remained attached together.”

He mentions experiments that show that fish bones rapidly separate
when the fish die and fall to the bottom, even if predators are kept
away. So this really does seem to be an evidence of rapid burial.
And this implies also that all of the well-preserved fossils that are
found, were buried rapidly.

This casts doubt on the idea that this deposit was laid down
gradually. fish fossils are sometimes found in the midst of eating
other fish, or giving birth. I realize that geologists say the
polystrate fossils (trees extending through many layers) fell into
place later on, but these fossils are very common, and a logical
corollary of catastrophic deposition.

I think it is interesting that many igneous bodies have wide
biostrategraphic limits. This implies that several geological periods
are missing, with only a lava flow to show for it. This seems
unlikely if these periods were really millions of years long, since
there should be some evidence of their passing, but becomes more
plausible if these periods were much shorter.

Coffin (and creationists in general) have given many, many evidences
of catastrophic conditions in the geologic column. As for Specimen
Ridge, which has many layers of upright fossil trees on top of one
another, Coffin gives a detailed analysis of this, showing that the
assumption of many forests growing on top of one another is not
realistic, and gives evidences for the mechanism of rapid transport of
trees from somewhere else. He does this as well for the forests of
Joggins Petrified Trees of Nova Scotia.

I wish I had time to type in his quotes about the huge volcano
eruptions of the past. These are not like anything we know today.
Instead, great cracks opened up in the surface of the earth and great
quantities of lava just gushed out. No need for a volcano at all!
There have been similar eruptions recently, but much more minor. Such
an event would of course have the possibility of enriching the
atmosphere or water in Ar40 and making the lava appear old just
because less Ar40 would escape.

He also mentions that if the Americas and Europe-Africa separated at
the assumed slow rate, there would have been enough runoff from
erosion to keep the Atlantic Ocean full, so there would not be any
Atlantic Ocean at all today.

Now, I want to discuss evidences of erosion between geologic layers.
The relative lack of erosion is evidence of rapid deposition and
catastrophic conditions in the past. Coffin writes,

“Some geologists estimate that up to 40 percent of the sediments laid
down in the past came from turbidity currents.” (p. 93)

And according to a later reference, the number has increased since
then. Turbidities are associated with rapid deposition.

As for the issue of uniformity, here is a quote from Coffin, page 104:

“Uniformity, however, has become through the years an inflexible and
controlling element in geological research, not an hypothesis that one
can discard if the facts don’t fit. If the results of research don’t
support uniformity, the research is at fault. The scientist then
initiates new research or reinterprets the facts even though he may
have to bend or rearrange them unrealistically.”

“It is my firm opinion that the concept of uniformity has greatly
delayed the advance of geological science. It has stagnated in some
areas for years with little progress compared to other sciences. Some
geologists have noted the condition but have not recognized the reason
why.” (page 107)

As for the degree of erosion between strata and evidence of
catastrophism, Coffin writes of the grand canyon region (page 111):

“The strata extend for scores and even hundreds of miles with
relatively little change in composition, texture, and thickness. We
look in vain to find comparable beds forming today.”

“But such erosion and depositional features [gulleys and gorges,
deltas etc.] are unknown for some of the beds, and the deposits are
massive, quite homogeneous, and not typical of stream and river
action.”

He mentions giant mud cracks fifteen or more feet high in the
geological record.

“However, when we look at the geological record and see thin,
flat-lying beds extending sometimes for hundreds of miles, we are at a
loss to find their modern counterparts.” (page 87)

“The deposits of the past often show essentially no evidence of
erosion on their surfaces.” (page 88)

“In some places in the world we can trace very thin beds, only an inch
or two thick, over hundreds of miles.” (page 89)

“Although we do find some erosion between certain beds, usually the
amount is small compared to the nature of the earth’s surface today.”
(page 90)

Coffin also gives evidence that the great coal beds were laid down
rapidly.

Anyway, I’d encourage readers to consult the book for details: Origin
by Design, by Harold Coffin, 1983, Review and Herald Publishing
Association.

As for fossils, it has been proposed that water with certain unusual
chemical compositions or certain kinds of bacteria can cause fossils
to be preserved, even if rates of sedimentation are slow. This must
be an unusual occurrence, since I don’t ever recall seeing the bottom
of a lake with zillions of well-preserved dead fish covered with
preservative bacteria. In fact, I don’t think that there is anywhere
in the world today that fossils like those in the fossil record are
forming, except possibly as a result of floods and rapid accumulations
of sediment. So if the present is the key to the past, we should
assume that such rapid accumulations of sediment occurred in the past,
too, when all of these fossils formed. Otherwise, we are giving up on
uniformitarianism to some extent. And what evidence is there that all
of these well-preserved fossils were formed by such unusual
conditions, anyway?

Note that since well-preserved fossils imply rapid burial, and many
fossils occur together, many creatures must have died at about the
same time. Otherwise, their fossils would be widely separated in the
rapidly falling sediment. Having many creatures die at once suggests
catastrophic conditions.

Someone claimed that Harold Coffin is clueless for promoting a
catastrophist view of geology. Those who think that must think that
Ager is clueless, too, for promoting a similar view in his book, “The
Nature of the Stratigraphic Record.” But remember that Ager is not a
creationist, and people are generally not so free in their criticism
of non-creationists.

We have several evidences for catastrophism in the geologic column:
1.) Turbidities, which some geologists believe are very common. 2)
Massive fossil deposits. 3) Geological layers whose boundaries are
marked by little erosion or signs of plant or animal life. 4) Massive
volcanic eruptions, unmatched by anything known today. All in all, I
think the picture is convincing, even though there may be many other
features that are not as easy to understand in this framework.

Concerning the catastrophic nature of the geological record, here are
some non-creationist references. This material may be found at
http://members.aol.com/DWR51055/tasc/faqs.htm, which is a creation FAQ
of the Triangle Society for Scientific Creation:

b. “Potentially more important to geological thinking are those
unconformities that signal large chunks of geological history are
missing, even though the strata on either side of the unconformity are
perfectly parallel and show no evidence of erosion. Did millions of
years fly by with no discernible effect? A possible though
controversial inference is that our geological clocks and
stratigraphic concepts need working on.” William R. Corliss, Unknown
Earth (Glen Arm, Maryland: The Sourcebook Project, 1980), p. 219.

RECORD IS CATASTROPHIC, DAVID M. RAUP, Chicago Field Museum, Univ. of
Chicago, “A great deal has changed, however, and contemporary
geologists and paleontologists now generally accept catastrophe as a
‘way of life’ although they may avoid the word catastrophe... The
periods of relative quiet contribute only a small part of the
record. The days are almost gone when a geologist looks at such a
sequence, measures its thickness, estimates the total amount of
elapsed time, and then divides one by the other to compute the rate of
deposition in centimeters per thousand years. The nineteenth century
idea of uniformitarianism and gradualism still exist in popular
treatments of geology, in some museum exhibits, and in lower level
textbooks....one can hardly blame the creationists for having the idea
that the conventional wisdom in geology is still a noncatastrophic
one.” Field Museum of Natural History Bulletin (Vol.54, March 1983),
p.2 1

CATACLYSMIC BURIAL, JOHN R. HORNER, “...there were 30 million fossil
fragments in that area. At a conservative estimate, we had discovered
the tomb of 10,000 dinosaurs ...there was a flood. This was no
ordinary spring flood from one of the streams in the area but a
catastrophic inundation. ... That’s our best explanation. It seems to
make the most sense, and on the basis of it we believe that this was a
living, breathing group of dinosaurs destroyed in one catastrophic
moment.” DIGGING DINOSAURS, 1988, p.131

FOSSIL PROGRESSION?, DAVID M. RAUP, Chicago Field Museum, Prof. of
Geology, Univ. of Chicago, “A large number of well trained scientists
outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology have unfortunately
gotten the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it
is. This probably comes from the oversimplification inevitable in
secondary sources: lowlevel textbooks, semipopular articles, and so
on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. In the
years after Darwin, his advocates hoped to find predictable
progressions. In general, these have not been found yet the optimism
has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks...One of
the ironies of the creationevolution debate is that the creationists
have accepted the mistaken notion that the fossil record shows a
detailed and orderly progression and they have gone to great lengths
to accommodate this ‘fact’ in their Flood Geology.” New Scientist,
Vol. 90, p.832, 1981

As for the separation of the continents, I found some references
about rates of erosion: (This is not a creationist source.)

The span since the Precambrian is long enough, at present rates of
erosion, for rivers to have shifted the equivalent of 25 to 30 times
the bulk of the existing continental masses, but the rate of erosion
and sedimentation is estimated to have increased with time.

...

Such transitory streams, rivers, or creeks are noted for their
gullying effects, especially for their rapid rates of erosion,
transportation, and deposition. There have been reports of up to 8
feet (2 m) of deposition in 60 years and like amounts of erosion
during a single flood event.

...

Roughly contemporaneous with the time of the Aztec Empire, this period
was characterized by what O’Hara described as “staggeringly high”
environmental impacts and erosion rates of 208 metric tons of soil per
hectare (85 tons per acre) per year.

All above quotes are from the online Encyclopedia Britannica, and the
first one is from the article “The River System through Time.”
Anyway, rates of erosion can vary, but one would have to justify that
they have been much smaller in the past. In addition, the fact that
there are so many evidences of rapid erosion in the geologic column
casts doubt on the statement that rates of erosion were slower then.

I wanted to make an additional comment on the separation of the
continents. The Americas are thought to have split off about 150
million years ago. Since the precambrian, erosion would have moved
about 25 to 30 times the continental masses. Since 150 million years
ago, it would be about 10 continental masses. Assuming half goes into
the Atlantic and half into the Pacific, it would be about 5
continental masses each way. Now, the average depth of the oceans is
less than 5 times the average elevation of the land, so this would be
enough erosion to cover an ocean area equal to the combined area of
the Americas, Europe, and Africa, which would easily fill the Atlantic
Ocean. Of course, as sediment enters the water, the sea level would
rise to some extent.

Now, it is possible that this sediment would cause the crust of the
earth beneath the Atlantic Ocean to sink to some extent. But since
there is a fixed amount of mass beneath the crust, this would mean
that the crust would have to rise somewhere else. Where would that
be? Since the whole Atlantic would be covered with sediment, it is
not likely that any place in the Atlantic would rise. The continents
are massive, much more under sea level than above, so it is not likely
that they would rise much, either. The oceans near the continents
would be receiving erosion just like the Atlantic, so they would not
rise much, either. The only place left would be somewhere near the
middle of the Pacific Ocean. So, in order for this to rise, the
downward force on the Atlantic would have to be transmitted through
the 1800 miles of solid rock under the crust, to somewhere in the
Pacific Ocean. This seems highly improbable.

In fact, the amount of sediment entering the Atlantic would be even
higher than I estimated above, since the mountain chains in the
Americas are much closer to the Pacific than the Atlantic. Also, the
Ural Mountains are on the eastern border of Europe, and the mountains
of Africa are far to the east, having a similar effect.

Of course, so much sediment entering the ocean would cause the sea
level to rise, to some extent. This would further lower the level of
the continents relative to the ocean, and tend to cause the earth to
become flooded.

Coffin mentions that at current rates of erosion, the Gulf of Mexico
would fill up in 6 million years, for example. Objections have been
raised to this estimate, which I now consider.

It is possible that the crust of the earth would sink to some extent
as matter infilled the Gulf of Mexico. But remember that the crust of
the earth is about 4 miles thick under the oceans, and about 20 miles
thick under the continents. So the thickness under the Gulf of Mexico
would probably be in between these limits. In addition, there is 1800
miles of solid rock underneath the crust. The crust moves in plates,
implying that it has considerable rigidity and would not bend easily.
And note that infilling of sediment would replace water with sediment,
so only the difference in density would add to the pressure on the
crust. By the time the crust got around to bending, the Gulf would
probably be almost full.

Sediments do compact, meaning that more sediment would be required to
fill the Gulf. But I believe that the measurement Coffin was
referring to already took this fact into account. In addition, shells
and bones continually fall to the bottom, and corals grow. Only an
inch of accumulation in 100 years would lead to about a mile of
sediment in 6 million years, even without erosion. The Gulf of Mexico
is about 2 miles deep at its deepest part, except for one place near
Mexico, so its average depth may be about a mile. All in all, the
filling in of the Gulf of Mexico in 6 million years is not
unreasonable. Coffin also notes that the current delta must have
formed in at most a few thousand years, assuming the northern border
of the Gulf of Mexico was initially straight. Thus one would have to
assume that the Mississippi River had a different course, emptying
into the Great lakes, as early as 5000 years ago to sustain the
current chronology.

The reliability of creationist sources is often questioned because
those who write them are not always experts in the areas they write
about. But I believe that their message is true, namely, God created
the universe, the earth, and all that is in it, God created life on
earth recently, and the earth since then has experienced a major
catastrophe. If in a few instances creationist discussion of
anomalies in radiometric dating is based on a misunderstanding of the
literature, there are plenty of other acknowledged anomalies that they
could have used just as well. All in all, I would much prefer
creationist sources to the talk.origins FAQ and standard textbook
treatments, which gloss over problems that specialists in the fields
do not hesitate to admit, and present uniformitarianism, evolution,
and radiometric dating as if these were beyond reproach. But I am
thankful for the many voices being raised against this triumvirate of
confusion, and believe that in the minds of many it is losing
credibility, despite the resistance of establishment science. Most
people only have time to become familiar with one of these three
aspects, and so their doubts are calmed by belief in the evidence from
the other two. But all three of them are in confusion.

In general, it’s good to read both sides of the story. So I continue
to recommend the creation web sites, including the following: